A general not so general question

["Daniel Kolath" <kolathd@home.com>]

Given that a gaming project usually takes 2 years, does anyone have an idea as to the breakdown of time spent in particular phases of an ideal 2 year gaming project?  x # of months in initial design, Y # of months in development (Y1 in tools design, Y2 is stage implementation, Yn etc.), Z # of months testing, etc.  From what I have read to this point, this seems to be a real mesh where phases of game development are pretty hazed over.  Specifically, I wanted to get an idea of how much plot/design I should have in place before coding (at least the .h files with implementation to come at a later time) and secondly if concept art is an ongoing process throughout the near final/pre-testing phases of game development or if that all gets done during the initial phases of a game.  Pretty vague, and I suspect that there is no real answer to this question, just preference.   I was hoping to put together a timeline for myself, so I could get an idea of when I should start seeking external help for various aspects of a game I am planning.  In my ideal world, I would like to have a great deal of design done, get to writing .h files so I could get extra programming help in the implementation of the .h files while hopefully keeping the entire design of the game pretty Object Oriented so that I won't have to stress over enormous amounts of code that need an even more enormous amout of code to fuction properly. 

 

Dan